SCAP: Student Centered Accountability Project

The Student-Centered Accountability Project (SCAP) is a collaborative effort by nine rural districts to create a more comprehensive system of accountability than the current state DPF system, by using multiple measures beyond the a single state assessment. The State Board of Education unanimously endorsed the work of the SCAP in June 2015 and directed CDE to support the project.  SCAP has the purpose of “whole child” accountability through continuous improvement of the system.  To accomplish this, the SCAP will use multiple measures to evaluate the success of students and to evaluate the capacity of the system. Their most recent meeting was in Buena Vista on October 14th where great progress was made on their work. 

Participating districts have identified three major elements to the SCAP accountability system:  Meaningful Learning, Professional Culture, and Resource Prioritization.  The Meaningful Learning element will include the DPF and local measures.   The local measures could include results from commercial standardized tests, as well as results from teacher-scored assessments.  Meaningful Learning would also include data from measures related to “learning dispositions,” such as levels of engagement and demonstrated mindsets of life-long learners.  Including learning dispositions as part of the body of evidence in accountability is at the core of the SCAP belief of focusing on the “whole child.”  In the Professional Culture area, districts will gather data on a large variety of topics which will include School Quality Review teams.  The final element, Resource Prioritization, will provide information about finance, facilities, safety and parent/community involvement. 

 The Student-Centered Accountability Project is focused on providing parents and the community accurate, well-rounded information to be used for strategic and continuous improvement.  Therefore, the Project proposes to give progress toward a target in multiple categories within in each of the three elements rather than giving a single overall score or rating. The decision to include the DPF was made to meet Federal requirements and provide some level of comparability from school to school.

 The nine pilot districts will be meeting again next month to continue work on the School Quality Review rubrics and process.  In addition, the group will be preparing for a work shop with the nine local school boards as well as a presentation to the State Board of Education.  SCAP looks forward to sharing that presentation and update with Rural Net readers as well.  SCAP districts are encouraged by the progress and state level support of this work and have much left to accomplish.  Stay tuned to this exciting work. 

 For more information about the Project, contact any of the member districts:  Buena Vista, Buffalo (sandersr@merino.k12.co.us) , Julesburg, Huerfano, Kit Carson,  La Veta,  Mancos, Monte Vista, and South Routt.

720-771-7515